Users collect and share an ever increasing number of digital images due to the proliferation of devices that may be used to capture these digital images as well as techniques that may be used to share the digital images, such as social networks, messaging, and so forth. As part of this, techniques have been developed to add digital paint to the digital images. For example, users may draw animal features on a face of a user in a digital image as virtual face paint as a fun way to create digital images that may be of interest to other users.
Conventional techniques to do so, however, may be difficult to perform and lack realism. For example, users may have difficulty in applying digital paint to a face of a user in a two-dimensional digital image in a realistic manner that addresses the contours and shape of the face. Accordingly, results of this conventional technique may lack realism and are thus limited to cartoonish caricatures. In another example, conventional techniques have been developed that support direct interaction with a three-dimensional surface. However, this interaction requires specialized knowledge on the part of the user to directly paint to the three-dimensional surface. For instance, these conventional techniques that involve three dimensions involve interactions with and application of digital paint as part of a defined three-dimensional surface. As part of this, complex non-intuitive manipulations (e.g., three-dimensional rotations and translations) are used to apply digital paint that is stored as part of the defined three-dimensional surface. This limits these conventional techniques to use by sophisticated users as well as limits that applicability of this digital paint to that defined three-dimensional surface.